Wet Rubi's War
by His Lordship Havoc
Summary: A continuation of the story of Rubi Malone. Occurs after the game timeline. Written while on hiatus from The Young Conqueror. Lots of graphic violence, language and some disturbing imagery. R&R's welcome, as always. Enjoy!
1. Chapter 1

**Disclaimer- **I do not own Wet, any associated characters or references to previous scenes from any media involving Wet. They are the property of Bethesda and a whole slew of other corporate entities I cannot readily name at the moment. Any situations or characters developed by me are strictly for expansion upon the existing media and for the entertainment value of the reader. This is a humble work of fanfiction, meant to be enjoyed on that level and no other. As always, comments and reviews are welcome. Please enjoy!

**Wet, Chapter I- Neck Thai Party**

Rubi strode through the dark streets of the Bangkok ghetto, ignoring the sheets of rain that pelted down around her. If her quarry knew that she was coming she had to admit she didn't really give a shit- her marks often panicked and made mistakes when they knew she was coming for them.

Barely working streetlights flickered erratically overhead, casting the entire street into fitful shadows. She scowled as she tried to focus through the darkness. Keeping her eyes up meant she risked night blindness thanks to the lights but the rain meant that lowering her eyes was not much better, with the illumination reflecting in the countless puddles. In her profession, acute peripheral vision was a must or you were dead.

Rubi Malone was feared in every corner of the globe as one of the best 'fixers' money could buy. If you had a problem that the law could simply not handle or you needed an illegal solution, she was who you went to. Loyal only to her pay and some personal ethics no one who knew her was stupid enough to inquire about, Rubi knew her business better than anyone.

She sneered as she thought of the flowery monikers she had been labelled with during her career- in Asia she was called the 'Tiger Orchid', feared as an assassin and mercenary for hire to the highest bidder. In Europe she was apparently known as 'Mams'elle de Sangue' or some crap. She didn't speak a lick of Italian and never planned to.

Or was that French?

Comparisons had been drawn between her and the notorious assassin Ilych Ramirez Sanchez, better known by his moniker of 'Carlos', an assassin who terrorized Europe, Asia and South America during the 60's and 70's. She had no clue why people bothered to make such idiotic assessments since she certainly wasn't an assassin- as far as she knew assassins were professional killers hired to be quick, clean and mysterious, leaving no trace of what had happened to the victim. That hardly sounded like her own MO. She simply waded in to find her assigned target, killed absolutely anyone who was so dumb as to get in her way and made sure that the trail of bodies discouraged those still living from pursuing her.

Sure as hell didn't sound like any assassin she had ever heard of. She was a fixer. There was a big difference.

Her head turned to look at some drunken local who staggered out of a storm drain, holding a bottle inside a greasy plastic bag. He was calling to her in the unintelligible local language, clearly wanting her attention. She had hoped he would simply fall over and drown in his own puke instead of following her, but she was not so lucky. He weaved and tottered on up to her, calling loudly for her to give him money (she assumed, based on his hand gestures). Realizing he was getting louder and might attract unwanted attention, she sighed and stopped to stare at him.

His bleary eyes tried to focus on her and they widened slightly when he realized she was white. He grinned a virtually toothless grin and laughed. His breath was beyond rancid.

"Pretty lady!" he drawled. "You… pretty…"

"Yeah, thanks, Romeo." Rubi said impatiently, wishing this fucktard would go away.

"I make you... feel good. We make feel good together…" he slurred in heavily accented English. We phukk… purrick in cunat… you like, yes?"

She scowled at the man while he pointed at her pants.

"Phukk…" he repeated. "Purrick in cunat. You take, you like. I phukk good…"

"Alright, that's it!" she growled as she grabbed him by the cheeks and shoved him up against the massive convex wall of the storm drain he had come out of. Her bottle green eyes glared balefully into his, but he was so drunk that he registered no fear, only confusion as to what was happening.

"Get this straight, purrick…" she hissed, her face close to his to make sure she had his attention. "You can fuck off with your nose or without it… your choice."

To make sure he understood his options, she drew her sword from her back and pressed the deadly point just inside his nostril. His eyes widened and then the expected fear flooded through him. She grimaced as she realized he was pissing himself.

He tried to recoil from her in his terror but was pinned against the massive concrete tunnel and the tip of her blade was still inside his nose. He began shaking so badly that he dropped his precious bottle to the ground, his body squirming in desperation to get away.

She let go of his cheeks and he lurched from the wall, staggering away whimpering. Luckily for him his pants were already coloured a dark brown naturally.

Rubi sighed and picked up the bottle he had left behind, examining it- Cobra Whiskey, with a real cobra pickled in the alcohol, which smelled like formaldehyde more than anything. She made a wry face and tossed the bottle away. Hadn't these people ever heard of bourbon?

Fucking rain. Fucking Thailand. She missed her boneyard and the dry heat of Texas. She couldn't wait to complete this job and get the hell out of here, if for no other reason than she hated flying and wanted this over with.

If it was ironic that she lived in the carcass of a World War II four-engine bomber then she really didn't give a shit. If people considered her a living contradiction, fuck 'em. She had a lot better things to concern herself with. Like getting paid.

Who the fuck was willing to pay this kind of money for a skull, anyways? She already knew her client had more money than God, but even for an eccentric billionaire crime lord, throwing half a mill down on retrieving his son's headbone was pretty cracked.

Well, whatever. As long as she got paid, he could do whatever he wanted with it.

She could not read the Thai scribbling on any of the street signs worth a damn and what few sign had English on them were mostly incomprehensible anyway, so she had memorized maps to lead her to the target. She was headed into Bangkok's seamy underground, a world of danger and excesses that made Hong Kong's crime syndicate look like Disneyland.

She had come here to Bangkok twice before, once for a simple parcel exchange and another time to retrieve a missing daughter. Both visits left her cold to the city, lauded by so many to be the jewel of the Far East; but to be fair she hated just about any urban environment with a passion. She even hated fucking Copenhagen, everyone was so damned pleasant.

She turned down a narrow alley, barely wide enough for one person to navigate. Wires and clothes lines hung overhead and the lights of the street were soon far behind her. In the near total dark, punctuated only by the flashes of lightning far overhead, she moved on, undeterred by an environment that would unnerve any normal person.

But Rubi wasn't a normal person and hadn't led a normal life. It was at moments like this that she was thankful for her rough upbringing. Fuck Bangkok, she had a job to do.

Voices.

The two men meandered slowly down the alleyway, talking to one another in the singsong language of the locals, all of which sounded like high-pitched gibberish to her. The one in front, the shorter of the two, was clearly telling some amusing anecdote, gesturing with his hands rather rudely while the one behind, clearly the stupider of the pair, guffawed. She could tell from the way they walked that both were carrying firearms in the small of their backs and just about their right shoe. Short push-daggers hung from their belts.

Fodder. Doubtless they thought they were important, but nobody important would be patrolling in the greasy rain on a pissy night like this.

Still, it was better to not be detected.

She watched as they passed beneath her, oblivious to the woman hanging directly above them from the bunched clothes lines and wires she gripped tightly in each hand, her legs spread and bracing her against the wall of the building on each side of the alley. She kept her breathing deep but slow, making sure no noise escaped her. She stayed rigid and straight, minimizing her body's effect on the rainfall below and no subsequent need to look up.

She almost wanted to take them down just for being stupid, to leave them choking in their own blood. But idiots like these were more useful to her alive, at least for now. She watched them carefully until they had disappeared from view, not likely to come back before she was further away.

She shimmied down the wall and stepped quietly onto the trash-riddled ground. Even the constant rain could not mask the reek of grease, rotting food and other smells she didn't care to think about. She continued moving down the alley, thinking about what her instructions had revealed to her, what she had yet to face.

She stepped over the body of some drunk that had sprawled in the alley but then realized that the man was actually dead, his face stricken with shock and fear, left, to die with his eyes wide. His neck was slit open from ear-to-ear, something she understood to be a form of gangland execution here in South Asia. His pale, wet skin was pulled tight against his bones, the rainwater pooling in his mouth tainted brown with old blood.

She could hear discordant music now, playing somewhere ahead of her. She pictured the rough map she had been presented, instructing her about how to find her way into the heart of Bangkok's criminal kingdom, a place the city and even national law enforcement authorities were smart enough to stay clear of.

Up ahead. The stairs down on the right, leading to a dingy door.

She pressed herself against the wall long enough to see what she was up against- there seemed to be only one guard, a wiry Thai youth wearing a t-shirt and gazing dully at the wall opposite the little unassuming landing he stood on. A cigarette hang loosely from his lips, a knife on his belt and a small pistol tucked into the back of his pants.

The lords of the Bangkok underground would pay dearly for fucking up tonight and relaxing their guard…

* * *

><p>Chen sucked in a mouthful of acrid smoke and tried not to cough. These Chinese cigarettes burned like a prostitute's pussy. Blue Swallow brand his ass, they smelled and tasted like panda shit. However, they were what the bosses and their inner circle smoked, so if he was going to get noticed and be moved off guard detail and making routine parcel drops, he had to show them he was serious.<p>

A peel of thunder and a flash of lightning lit up the alleyway. The cigarette in his mouth drooped further on his lower lip as he gaped at the white woman who had appeared out of nowhere and stood in front of him, her green eyes locked with his.

Her fingers struck him in the throat and the world burst into white light. He felt himself tumbling to his knees, retching and gasping for air. He could barely think, let alone breathe. Speckles of blurry colour swam in his vision until he saw a dark object coalesce into the definitive shape of a boot. He was dimly aware of someone standing over him.

Still on his hands and knees, he slow turned his head up to look at Rubi, who stared down unconcernedly. For all she cared, he might have been some piece of the alley's trash, stuck to the sole of her combat boot.

"Don't you know those things are killers?" she said as she kicked him in the head, smashing the cigarette through his lips and back into his mouth. Not that it mattered to Chen, because he was unconscious before his head bounced off the rough stone of the landing. Rubi stepped over the prostrate boy and headed down the short flight of stairs. The shoddy metal blue door gave way easily and she was officially inside Bangkok's underworld.

Timing and constant motion would be her ally now, subtlety a luxury she could not count on. Stealth had gotten her this far, it would now become an ace she would play as a last resort. Speed and ruthlessness became her weapons.

She strode down the hallway, her nostrils assaulted by the myriad smells of vices she cared not to guess at- opium, hashish, urine and worse, accompanied by strange music and mingled cries of pleasure and pain from rooms she could not yet see. A burly guard stepped in her way to stop her progress and she drew a pistol and pulled the trigger before he could react. The silencer on the muzzle worked admirably and little more than a loud '_pop_' could be heard before he tumbled backwards, a .45 bullet in his forehead.

She advanced further down the hall, realizing she was doubtless beneath the buildings that made up the slum quarter of the city. Another guard, this one wearing a white t-shirt that clung to his torso, showing off his taut, lean muscles, staggered out of a room from which smoke billowed, his eyes bleary and red. She lunged in and rammed her elbow into his face before grabbing his arm, twisting it violently and snapping the radius bone in his forearm. Her own arm clamped over his mouth quickly before he could cry out in pain and she wrenched on his neck, hard. The sickening sound of vertebrae giving way was drowned out by the garish T-Rock blaring from the room. He sagged instantly and she shoved the body back into the small den. She was about to close the door when she paused, caught up in a wave of revulsion at what she saw…

A girl, seemingly half-Thai and possibly half-black, lay on a bunch of pillows inside the room. Her arms were missing below the elbow as were her legs below the knees. She was splayed submissively on the pillows, her legs spread and ready. What remained of her body was covered in piercings and coarse tattoos, her head shaven except for a single braid trailing from the middle. Her eyes were glazed as she sucked on a slender tube that led to an opium pipe, doubtless the one thing that made this existence tolerable. She seemed heedless of the corpse Rubi had just thrown to the floor.

Rubi's teeth clenched as she looked at the thing that might once have been human- it would have been mercy to put a bullet between its eyes, ending the pain forever. Instead she turned away and shut the door behind her, determined to not let Bangkok's sickness get the better of her.

The reddish lights of the long hallway did nothing to improve her mood. A rat scampered over her toe as she willed herself forward, knowing this den of iniquity would end and she would be closer to her target.

A young girl, completely naked, stumbled out of another room and leaned against Rubi, draping her arms around the foreigner's neck; Rubi caught her in surprise, grasping the girl's waist the keep them both from tumbling to the floor. The Thai girl giggled incoherently, her soft, café-coloured skin warm against the mercenary girl's.

_"Pom yak yet kun..._" she purred, her liquid brown eyes gazing up into Rubi's. Her breath carried the sickeningly sweet scent of hashish. The girl moved herself closer, rubbing her small breasts into Rubi's chest, heedless of the rough leather of her bandoliers, the sword strap or cold brass buckles of her jacket.

"_Len phuuen siaw..._" she mumbled in her language. Rubi composed herself and thrust the girl back into the room before closing the door. She _had_ to get out of this hallway, the drugs in the air were impairing her reflexes and reaction time.

The cacophony of moans and garish music began to give way to tides of cheers. She turned a corner down another hall, this one lit by long rows of fluorescent lights. At the far end of the hallway she could see a set of double doors, dark metal with tiny windows. In front hulked two guards, glaring coldly down the hallway, their arms crossed.

She could hear the wailing pitch of ritual Thai music on the other side of the doors, competing to be heard over the cheers of the crowd. She recognized the music as the accompanying tune of a Muay Thai match, the arrhythmic beats and notes meant to keep the combatants in fighting form while they savaged one another in the ring. True Muay Thai was one of the most brutal forms of martial arts in the Far East, known for lots of blood, serious injuries and frequent deaths.

The two guards just waited silently as she approached, their eyes hidden by unusually expensive-looking shades. They uncrossed their arms and one made a gesture for her to stop but Rubi had drawn her pistols off her belt and shot them both dead. The noise of the crowd and music was all she could hear now, almost shaking the floor with their excitement.

She took half a second to remove the silencers from the muzzles of her pistols and tossed them aside- with as much noise as the crowd was generating, she doubted that a gunfight was likely to be heard. More than that, the silencers reduced the accuracy and strength of her bullets, an advantage she would doubtless need shortly. She stepped over the corpses of the men she had just killed and pushed the doors open…

* * *

><p>No one was watching her enter because the fighting in the ring was intense. The fighters were covered in one another's blood, their hands wrapped in hemp ropes which had then been smeared with glue and covered in broken glass. Their knees were similarly adorned and both men wore deep gashes and contusions around their bodies as signs of their willingness to kill one another. The left arm of the man in the blue trunks hung limply, the shoulder and upper arm torn open, the bicep muscle spilling out of the skin. His foe, the man in red trunks, was missing half of his face, the skin and most of one eye replaced by terrible gashes of blood and gore.<p>

Neither man seemed deterred from the fight though, and they lunged and clashed with an inhuman savagery. The man in red slammed his fist across his foe's jaw, opening it and sending teeth flying. The man in blue staggered and swayed drunkenly for a moment, which was all the time his opponent needed to dart in and finish him off- but it had been a ruse and the man in red's head snapped backward as blue leapt and rammed his knee up into his throat shattering his larynx.

The man in blue trunks fell to one knee, gasping for air as his foe died, blood spreading from his ruined throat and a dozen other lacerations. The crowd was going wild, cheering in delight or shouting in outrage. No one noticed Rubi making her way along the back wall; even the guards were intent on the results in the ring.

Then she saw a man across the arena, sitting ringside, applauding politely. He was a Thai, wearing a white suit with a chrysanthemum on the lapel. Surrounded by glowering guards, he seemed perfectly at ease in his surroundings.

Rubi had faced off against this man once before, one of Thailand's biggest crime lords. He had iron control of the drug trade south of Hong Kong and ran an international prostitution ring that the Russian mafia was envious of.

Sitting with him was a fat German man, his pinkish skin slick with sweat from the heat of the packed arena. The two of them were chattering on about the match and the results, which were clearly to the European man's liking and not that of his host. Beside the German sat a young Thai girl wearing a dog collar and a spare leather outfit that showed off her nubile body. Even from across the arena, Rubi could see the pain in the girl's eyes.

_Bumsenbomber_.

She debated for only a half second as to which of these men would be the better distraction if she shot one of them but her mind was made up by the time her pistol had come out and the report of the gun firing echoed around the arena…

The German pitched backward, blood spurting from his head as it came apart like a melon hit with a bat. Blood, brains and vitae showered everyone nearby, causing shock and panic. The Thai kingpin was instantly mobbed by his guards and hustled away, though they found themselves hampered by the stampeding crowd as everyone screamed and drove toward the exits.

The little Thai girl next to the headless German never moved.

Rubi dashed toward the back wall and ran up it, launching into the air and grabbing a ledge. She clenched the metal rail tightly and ran along the wall until she could reach the second level of the arena, scrambling nimbly over the ledge. She took off at a run, the upper levels clearing far more quickly than those below. She waded into the rear of the mass of churning humanity, despising the cattle around her for their unthinking panic and desperation to escape a situation they did not understand. She had no doubt dozens would die in the frenzied press to escape the scene. Good riddance.

She forced her way through the crowd and dashed down a side hallway, recalling that a service elevator was not far ahead. She would take it up into a building directly above, a hotel she had been told looked dilapidated and shoddy on the outside but within was the lair of her target.

After the death of the drug lord Pelham, her mark had returned to Thailand and was now re-establishing herself in the underworld, her services going to those who offered not necessarily the most money but the most opportunity to kill and inflict agony and pain.

Rubi came up against a metal door that would not open. Snarling, she whipped her sword off her back and jammed the point of the blade through the seal and then braced herself, beginning to pull. The muscles in her legs, core and shoulders flexed and rippled beneath her clothes as she exerted her will against that of her egress.

"C'mon, goddammit!"

With a groan and then a screech, the weary metal of the door buckled and then gave way. Sheathing her blade, she strode through and spied the elevator she needed to take. The hallway was dimly lit and lined with rooms. A door not far ahead of her burst open and a man brandishing a baseball bat sporting spikes charged at her. Rubi ducked his vicious swipe and slashed him across the torso with her blade, laying his ribcage wide open. She ignored his piteous screams as she began to run.

She kicked a wheeled serving station down the hall in front of her and it rammed into another man as he came out of a room, causing him to stumble. The echo of her pistol firing thundered in the hallway and the man dropped with a bullet in his gut. Rubi felt the haze coming over her as she sprang up onto the serving station and then leapt in the air, her pistols already out and she began firing as the henchmen who guarded her target and other crime leaders began to converge on her location, determined to stop her.

It all seemed so slow to her at moments like this. Her enemy's moves could have been preserved in amber. She could see and predict what they would do, the bullets trailing lazily away from her pistols and unerringly finding their way into her target's soft flesh. Even as she careened over their heads, many of them gaping in wonder, she twisted and rolled in mid-air, firing at them until the hallway was clear. They never stood a chance.

She landed easily, with the grace of a jungle cat and resumed her sprint. Not far ahead of her was the elevator and she scowled as the doors open and out spilled yet more lackeys, some carrying makeshift weapons while others sported pistol.

"Why bother, you're already dead!" Rubi shouted as she flung her sword forward, burying it in the skull of the first man to exit the elevator. Those behind paused in shock but by then she was on them like a tiger. She ducked the panicked swing of a machete and punched the assailant in the armpit, shattering bone and driving shards into his arteries and lungs. She ignored him while she drove the reinforced heel of her boot down onto the instep of another, the pain making him stumble before she rammed her knee into his midriff. The last one tried to escape the confines of the elevator but received a bullet to the back of his head for his cowardice. Rubi yanked her sword from the head of the first victim and shoved him out of the elevator with her toe, allowing the doors to close finally.

The wait was maddening. The elevator whirred, droned and vibrated as it made its way slowly upward. Rubi scowled at the control panel, thankful that at least the numbers on the button were in standard Western numerals, but still…

She glanced up and saw a camera fixed on her. She glared at it malevolently before sighing and pounding the button of the floor she wanted repeatedly.

_I fucking hate Thailand!_

The chime went off and the elevator juddered to a halt. The doors opened and Rubi stood beside them for a few seconds, wary of any hail of bullets that might greet her. When no barrage met her arrival, she peeked around the doors and then exited rapidly, knowing that time was of the essence.

The doors to the rooms of this once luxury hotel were painted different colours but only one was painted black…

She kicked the door in and stared into the suite- it was apparently empty but Rubi knew better than to trust the initial impression, given the nature of her target. In contrast to her foe's nature, the furnishings were opulent and lavish, mostly vermillion and gold. It was only on second glance that she realized that the deep red colouring of the walls was blood and skulls and other skeletal remains provided much of the décor.

"Where are you, you sick bitch?" she hissed as she strode into the room. "Haven't got the balls to face me?"

She felt a chill go up her spine and a draft behind her. She spun and slashed with her sword but cut thin air. Her eyes narrowed, angry that she had missed. It was a pattern she was used to now, this having been her third time fighting Lady Tarantula, possibly the deadliest woman in Asia and certainly the most feared.

During their first fight in London, Rubi had been convinced that she had killed the albino woman, nearly twisting her head off, snapping her neck and leaving her for dead in the courtyard of an English manor. Lady Tarantula seemingly disagreed and somehow lived on, more deadly than ever, seemingly. They had crossed blades again in Los Angeles and this fight had been a draw, the Thai assassin fleeing into the night once her employer had been killed.

This time, though, was rather personal for Rubi. Hired by William Ackers to retrieve the skull of his son Trevor from Lady Tarantula, Rubi was determined to make this their final fight. The senior Ackers had apparently been sent pictures of Tarantula with his son's remains and he was so incensed that he hired Rubi to get the skull whatever her asking price. Though the old man had never fully forgiven Rubi for her inadvertent part in his son's brutal death at the hands of Lady Tarantula, who was working for a rival crime lord named Pelham, he knew that she could be counted upon to get the job done, no matter what it took. This was Tarantula not only taunting Ackers but clearly challenging Rubi to come and finish what they had started. A trap? Certainly. Did Rubi care? Hell no.

Her price had been steep but Ackers agreed willingly paying half up front as a sign of good faith in their new working relationship. Rubi got her gear together, had a few stiff drinks, took several deep breaths and was on her way to Bangkok.

Pain flashed across the back of her shoulder and she knew Tarantula had tagged her. She hissed in pain and spun about, slashing angrily with her sword. She mastered her temper and remembered everything she had told herself about her foe- Tarantula was completely blind. However she did what she did, she did it unhampered by the vagaries of sight. Hearing, sense of smell, a taste in the air, changes in pressure or warmth… the assassin relied on other seemingly superhuman senses to pinpoint her prey and then she crippled them systematically before indulging in the business of cutting them to pieces, making sure they died _very _slowly.

Ruby bit her lip as she concentrated on facts she knew and conclusions she had drawn. Every time they had fought, Tarantula never attacked her from the front, always assailing Rubi from some oblique and unexpected angle, sometimes even from above. Unlike Pelham's other bodyguard, the German fencer known simply as 'Ze Doktor', Lady Tarantula cared not for a proper flourish or a coup-de-grace, only the pain she could inflict on her foe, something she was less likely to accomplish if she attacked from the front where she could be seen.

Rubi thrust a brutal kick out to her side and just behind, rewarded with a shocked wheeze as he boot impacted her foe's midriff. The reinforced block leather of Tarantula's outfit mitigated the damaged but she was still sent staggering back. Rubi cursed as she spun to face her foe, only to discover that she was gone in the split second it had taken her to turn around.

Was it sound? Could Tarantula pinpoint her location and facing based on her breathing and heartbeat?

She rolled forward and ignored the hissing sounds of twin daggers slicing the air where she had been a split second before. She grabbed a remote off a glass table and hit the power button, turning on the large flatscreen television that dominated the far wall. The program blared loudly, people babbling in what she assumed was Thai, filling the suite with its annoying din.

She dodged and zig-zagged through the large living room and into the kitchenette, where she switched on the blender and a small radio, adding further to the white noise that dominated the space. She rolled and dodged again, waiting to see how her foe would react to this tactic.

A pistol barked and the television exploded in a shower of sparks, hissing and fizzing angrily before going silent. Rubi smiled, knowing her target was disconcerted by the cacophony. Another shot rang out and the radio burst apart. All that remained was the high-pitched whining and grinding of the blender.

She nodded and closed her eyes as a third bullet destroyed the machine, bringing silence back to the suite. After the din she had created, the silence was so loud that Rubi was certain she could hear almost anything.

Eyes still closed, she subtly shifted one of her boots on the floor, creating the slightest rustle of noise.

To her left…

Rubi caught the dual strikes on her sword blade, hearing Tarantula hiss in frustration as her lethal assault was thwarted. She answered with a brutal punch aimed at Tarantula's throat, but the assassin twisted and took the blow on her shoulder, knocking her back. Unwilling to let the pale assassin out of her sight again, Rubi followed up closely, striking and slashing with all the speed she could muster.

Tarantula parried with her pistols, taking any opportunity she could to counterattack. Her unreal white, almost opaque skin gleamed in the wan light as the woman dueled for their lives.

Rubi's head snapped to the side as Tarantula slammed the butt of her pistol across her foe's jaw, but Rubi did not relent and her blade slashed open the front of Tarantula's dress, missing her torso by millimeters. The Thai assassin's alabaster breasts and midriff were now exposed and she hissed in fury.

"Nice tits, bitch!" Ruby sneered as her hand flashed out and grabbed a handful of Tarantula's hair, pulling her head back and exposing her throat.

"What a pity you've never known what they look like!"

Rubi gritted her teeth as she felt one of the blades that tipped Tarantula's pistols bite into her thigh. She kept pulling back on her hair until her foe's spine was curved and then she hooked a foot behind the Thai woman's knee and slammed her to the ground. Before Tarantula could react, Rubi had straddled her chest to pin her and punched down repeatedly, driving her fist into her foe's face savagely. Her arms pinned beneath Rubi's knees, Tarantula tried to use her long and impossibly flexible legs to unbalance Rubi but to no avail. Her strength ebbed as the American hammered merciless blows down repeatedly, her face becoming progressively spattered in her victim's blood.

Even through the bloody welter that had once been her face, Tarantula's sightless white eyes goggled up at Rubi, somehow flashing defiance. Sick of the mocking, Rubi finished their feud and pressed her sword to Tarantula's neck. With both hands she pushed down, tender flesh and bone giving way until the assassin's head rolled away from her twitching body, blood spurting from the lily-white neck stump and spreading in a crimson pool across the floor.

Panting, Rubi slowly rose and scowled as she noticed the severed head still staring at her, the tongue lolling obscenely out of the mouth.

"You never know when to let a joke go, do you, bitch?" she muttered. She limped away from the decapitated corpse and found a velvet sack on a table. She deposited the Thai assassin's head inside the sack and tied it tight, ignoring the dark, sticky spot that began to gather on the bottom.

Her foe disposed of (hopefully) once and for all, she began to cast about the suite, looking for signs of the skull of Trevor Ackers. The problem was that the more she searched, the more skulls she found. Tarantula had apparently souvenirs of her kills and the quantity spoke to the length of her gruesome career.

"Are you fucking kidding me?" Rubi groused as she examined the small mountain of skulls she had collected in the middle of the floor some half-hour later. She pulled a pistol off her belt and shot a lackey who came bursting through the door, obviously late for the party but eager to earn his pay. She hadn't even turned her attention away from her grisly handiwork.

Fuckhead.

"What the hell am I supposed to do with all these goddamn skulls?" she complained loudly to the room.

* * *

><p>"What the hell am I supposed to do with all these goddamn skulls?" William Ackers exclaimed as she examined the ghastly pile Rubi now presented him with.<p>

"Why are you asking me?" Rubi replied simply.

"How do I even know that Trevor's skull is amongst your collection here?" he demanded.

"Oh, like I had the fucking resources or means to find out while I was in Bangkok's underworld," the raven-haired fixer sneered. "Use one of your endless spare millions of drug dollars to run a DNA test or check dental records or something. Given how stupid your son was, I'd start with the smaller heads first."

Ackers coloured at her disparaging of the size of his departed son's brainpan. He hated to admit it but the girl had a point. How was she supposed to identify Trevor's skull when Tarantula had made a habit of keeping the skull of _all _her victims?

"Here, I'll even throw in this one for free." Rubi said, tossing a velvet sack on the ground in front of the crime lord. The opening loosened and out rolled Tarantula's head, coming to rest at his feet, the pure white eyes staring up at him disconcertingly.

Ackers swallowed. "I… well, at least we know that the whore responsible had paid once and for all."

"Yeah, speaking of paying…" Rubi said testily.

Ackers nodded and cleared his throat. He gestured to a guard who now brought forward a metal briefcase. The man opened it for her perusal.

It was packed with thousand-dollar bills.

"The other half, as agreed, plus some extra for delivering Tarantula to me." Ackers said.

Rubi said nothing but merely closed the briefcase, took it from the guard and headed for the door, her business concluded.

"One more thing, Miss Malone." William Ackers called at her receding back. "I now consider all issues between us settled and we are on good terms."

"Whoopdi-fuckin-doo." Rubi replied as she kept walking.

"Perhaps you would care to examine the possibility of working directly for me?" the drug magnate suggested.

Rubi paused and turned slowly to look at the old man.

"The job security is excellent and your skills would be most valuable to me." Ackers pressed.

Rubi smirked. "Even I don't love money _that _much, old man. Takes a lot more than that to get me wet…"

And with that she was gone. Ackers sighed and shook his head.

"_Mark my words, Miss Malone, we will meet again someday. Whether you will it or no, our destinies intertwine. Now I know what Trevor saw in you. You certainly are a prize."_

He looked down at Tarantula's head and nudged it with his toe.

He repressed the urge to scream in terror when he thought he saw the head smile.

_End Chapter I_

**Author's Notes: ** There's not a lot of Wet fanfiction out there and what there is of it is rather pathetic. While I would not go so far as to say that my own work defines the medium, I am pleased with my storytelling skills and thought I'd make a go of it.

The idea of writing the Wetfic (if I may call it such) came about after I finished the game and was displeased with the rather weak story ending. Maybe Bethesda ran out of money, maybe they were too busy developing Skyrim, maybe they were all hung over and asked the sober janitor to write the ending so they could meet the deadline or maybe they were inspired by the worst ending in video game history (Clive Barker's Jericho) and attempted to outdo it. If so, they failed, but I still do not appreciate their attempt.

Rubi is interesting to work with because she is not a likeable person. If you or I knew her in real life, we would no doubt harbour an active dislike for her, much as a person would for Kratos or any other sociopathic antihero turned out by our jaded and over privileged culture. Couple her winning personality with her 70's grindhouse skillset and you have a fic that makes for challenging writing. Considering that she can't do _anything_ in the game unless she is flying through the air, running along a wall or skidding on her knees to activate her cool-ass acrobatic slo-mo combat repertoire, one must rely on heavy narration and plot in order to keep the story interesting. If she spent as much time on her knees in my story as she did in the game, this fic would need to be posted to aff instead. But I'll tackle that fic another time.

Anyhoo, this was also a good excuse for me to take a brief break from writing 'The Young Conqueror', my Dynasty Warriors fic, also to be found on this page. My life has fallen apart and changed radically recently, so my muse took a vacation for a while there. More than that, TYC has reached 60 chapters and is now close to 700,000 words so I decided to give Sun Ce and the gang a few weeks of peace. Rubi seems up to the challenge in the meantime and I have an entirely new plot to plunge her into all written up and looking to be fleshed out.

If you have not played Wet, I recommend giving it a shot. It's not for everyone, but if you like macho girls with guns and a colourful command of invective, I think you might just enjoy it, at least up until the ending.

And what's not to love about a game with an exclusively psychobilly soundtrack? Kinda strange that the Horrorpops were not among the bands enlisted for the game, if you ask me. A double bass playing girl with more tats than Rubi? Sweet!

Peace out and Happy Chinese New Year! Keep an eye out for Chapter II, coming up real soon, I promise!

Management


	2. Chapter 2

**Disclaimer- **I do not own Wet, any associated characters or references to previous scenes from any media involving Wet. They are the property of Bethesda and a whole slew of other corporate entities I cannot readily name at the moment. Any situations or characters developed by me are strictly for expansion on the existing media and for the entertainment value of the reader. This is a humble work of fanfiction, meant to be enjoyed on that level and no other. As always, comments and reviews are welcome. Please enjoy!

* * *

><p><strong> Rubi's War, Chapter II- From Humble Beginnings…<strong>

Rubi gritted her teeth as she felt the burn in her muscles while she swung about on the pole. She ignored the people gaping at her; she didn't give a shit about them. All that mattered was banishing the awful anger, the blood-boiling rage she felt. These stupid uneven bars could not allow her to move fast enough, the other kids could still see the bruises on her skin. Maybe they couldn't see the aches she felt but the results were telling.

Some well-meaning teachers had tried to get her to talk, but she had always told them to fuck off, it was none of their fucking business. She'd survived so far without them, she didn't need their help and she sure as hell didn't need their pity. Her mother had been smart and got the fuck out a long time ago, soon after Rubi's younger brother had been born.

Her dad never recovered from that and never forgave his children. Rubi bore the brunt of his rage, to protect her brother from his drunken fury. Her jaw burned, threatening to break her concentration, which was risky, since she was whipping around the bars as a single mistake could lead to broken bones, or even her neck.

Why was she so angry today? It wasn't like she didn't get smacked around almost daily or told what a worthless piece of shit she was- it actually made her kind of paranoid if she didn't get at least one drunken punch aimed at her a day. It must've been about Les. She had found her brother behind one of the school's utility sheds, surrounded by boys who were taking turns slapping him in the face while he was held down. He trembled and wept piteously as it happened.

She leapt on the boys, beating them savagely, unafraid to use her nails in their eyes or kick them in the balls- they had it coming for picking on her little brother. They fled in terror before her and she picked him up and tried to dust him off.

"Les, do you have to keep being such a fucking wimp?" she groused while she wiped the tears from his face. "I won't be around forever to protect you and they are just going to wait until I'm gone. You know that, right?"

The boy sniffled. "You're a fighter, Rubi, you always have been. I can't be like you. I just… get scared whenever I get threatened. My body just stops, I can't help it."

"You're gonna have to find a way, because as soon as I can get the fuck away from here, I am." Rubi said darkly. They both knew that the boys would tell the school that Rubi was picking on them again and in turn the principal would phone Rubi's dad. Then there would be hell to pay.

Les' face was scarlet with shame. "I… I wish I could stand up to him for you, Rubi. I wish I weren't so afraid. It's not fair for you to get beat up because of me."

"Well, you're the one with the brains, so you'd better find a way for us to make some money and leave this shithole town." Rubi replied. "It's not like I'm not sick of having the shit kicked out of me."

Her ribs throbbed as she swung again around the uneven bars. The pain was almost searing. The bastard must've nearly broken one of them yesterday. She couldn't do anything afterward except lie on her side on her mattress in the corner of the room and tremble in agony. It had hurt so fucking bad…

Her eyes flared and everything had slowed down, that weird thing that had begun to happen. Absolutely everything was both blurry and crystal clear all at once. The calmness followed right after and the pain moved to the back of her mind. Her revolutions around the bar seemed to take forever now. The expressions on the people who watched below seemed stupider than ever at this speed.

Fuck 'em.

The rail around the upper walkway of the school's gym. It was right there…

Without another thought she swung and let go of the bar, somehow knowing the exact moment to do so. She sailed through the air, ignoring the stunned expressions of the onlookers and caught the metal edge of the banister. She let out a shout of fury and began running along the metal grating, holding onto the rail with one hand. The doors of the upper level were open and she nimbly leapt over the rail and sprinted into the hallway.

She locked herself in a broom closet and turned out the light, sitting in the dark and breathing heavily. Forget the fight, she had another concern now. The school was once again going to contact her father and try to pressure him into letting her compete, filling his drunken fucking head with words like 'amazing athlete' and 'Olympic-level gymnast'. Fuck that. She didn't do it to compete or for fame. She did it because it made the pain go away, however briefly.

And when she refused, as she knew she would, her father would beat the fuck out of her once they got home, maybe sooner. Her bruises were throbbing already just at the thought.

The closet door opened and someone stepped inside and sat down opposite her. Rubi didn't need to look up or ask who it was. Only one person was crazy enough to follow her in these moods.

"So apparently you're Spider Man now," Starr said quietly. "Wish I'd seen it. Did you really leap from the unevens all the way to the railing on Level Two?"

"Bad news travels fast," Rubi muttered. "This is gonna cost me when I get home. "

"So don't go home," her one and only friend said simply. "If I don't feel like going home, I don't."

"Yes, but your parents are rich and never home. If my dad isn't home, it just means he's out getting shitfaced and losing money gambling. Then he comes home and takes it out on me. And if I'm not there, he'll take it out on Les. I can't let that happen."

Starr sighed. "Y'know, he might toughen up if you let him get his ass kicked once in a while."

"I told you not to even joke about that." Rubi growled. "Les is the one of us who is worth anything; he has a chance if he can graduate in one piece."

"Well, it's Wednesday, so your brainy brother has debate and chess after school until late. So you've got several hours before you need to be home to protect him anyway. Why don't you and I go have some fun?"

"Because I am fucking sore and not in the mood for that sort of thing." Rubi replied sourly.

"I didn't mean _that_," giggled Starr. "I meant let's go get in some trouble. All that climbing and swinging you do, I am willing to bet we can get into some nice homes and nab some shit that's worth a few bucks."

Rubi said nothing.

Starr leaned in and smiled slyly, whispering in her friend's ear. "If we make enough, you'll be able to afford those bare-knuckle lessons from the Romanian Jew down at the gym…"

Starr had, in fact, offered on several occasions to pay for Rubi's lessons with old Artur Evreilor but Rubi being Rubi had steadfastly refused, determined to make the money on her own. The problem was that she was no good as a student meaning that the other easy way to get cash was to let boys do things she wasn't about to let them do. She hated boys almost as much as she hated her father; or herself, for that matter.

But robbing people who had too much to begin with, well, she could get behind that.

Starr, the brains of their little scheme, found their targets and made sure that the risk was minimal. Rubi would sneak into the places using her acrobatic skills to enter from unusual places and steal whatever she could. Within a week, police were looking for a professional cat-burglar of exceptional skill, never suspecting that two teen girls were the culprits.

The venture worked well- Starr alleviated her boredom and Rubi soon had enough money to pay for her classes with the old Jew. He taught her something called 'Krav-Maga' or some such shit. She didn't really care what it was called, all she knew was that she was really good at it. Some weeks after beginning the training she kicked the living fuck out of the biggest bully in the school, to the place where the police were called. Before she got hauled off to a halfway house for troubled teens, she slipped all her ill-gotten cash into her brother's hands and told him that he needed to get away.

Starr promised to help Les in any way she subtly could. She screamed and pleaded with tears on her face as Rubi was taken into a car. She kissed her beloved frantically, no doubt betraying their secret they had kept for so long.

The juvenile houses couldn't handle her and it wasn't long before she was sent home by the system that claimed to want to help her. Her father and sobbed and hugged her tight upon her return, apparently having one of his rare melancholy and sensitive moments. He spent nearly two hours blubbering about how much he had missed her and how much like her mother she was. Rubi endured all she could before announcing she was going to bed.

Naturally she didn't but left through the window of the ramshackle old hut they lived in. She found Starr and their reunion was joyous, at least a joyous as Rubi ever got, meaning she wasn't angry. She found out that Les had indeed run away and last Starr had heard he was somewhere on the east coast, going to school in a New England state. Rubi sighed in relief, glad that he had finally got out.

To Rubi's surprise, Starr smiled wickedly and suggested _not_ that they celebrate their reunion in a more traditional way but by indulging in some larceny. They would get re-acquainted physically after that. Clearly the patrician girl had something in mind and Rubi's return was providence. Rubi agreed readily, eager to test herself against whatever challenge awaited.

They made their way into the city, specifically to Chinatown. Prowling the dingy alleys and avoiding the locals, they made their way to the back of a particular store in the heart of the neighbourhood. The alley reeked of rotting vegetables and greasy meat. Rubi couldn't help but notice exactly how out of place Starr looked here and yet seemed so pleased to be. Her friend took a deep breath.

"My folks took me to this neighbourhood back in January during Chinese New Year. We stopped in the shop we're behind right now. It's dingy and dark inside and almost no one knows it, because apparently you have to be invited to see it. My folks are rich white people, so they got an invite from a Chinese friend. Rubi, there's shit in there that will set you up but good if you can get it."

"Set me up good," Rubi remarked. "What about you?"

"I have enough, you know that." Starr replied. "I'm in it for the thrill. But if you _do _want to boost something for me, there's a really cool opium pipe in there I'd love to have as a collector's piece. Anything else you see, well take it. I'll wait here. I'm challenging you to fifteen minutes."

Rubi nodded while Starr slipped into the shadows. She looked around at her surroundings, letting her eyes adjust to the darkness of night. The back door had an alarm and a lock. There were no cameras. Then she saw it- there was a ventilation shaft maybe twenty feet over her head. It looked like she might fit in it, so all she had to do was get up there.

Below the vent was a drainage pipe that ran horizontally along the building's wall. The alley was narrow and some boxes on the opposite wall gave her some leverage. She ran and leapt, sprinting up the stacked wooden crates and then springing off the wall to grab the drainage pipe. She clung to it, breathing hard as she dug her fingers in. The pipe was greasy and her grip tenuous. She looked up and estimated that the vent was maybe five feet above her. She took a deep breath and surged upwards, reaching with her right hand. She caught the rim and ignored the slivers of pain as the aluminum dug into her fingers.

She shimmied her legs up until she was crouched on the pipe. She then raised herself, fingers on the vent, her toes turned out and her body pressed to the wall. She then nimbly took a pocket knife out of her pants and undid the already flimsy screws holding it the grate in place. She tossed it aside and squirmed into the vent shaft, trying not to breathe hard. The fit was very tight and she had to squeeze her eyes shut and will herself not to scream in panic as she wriggled forward.

She tried to make no noise as she slithered in the claustrophobic darkness of the shaft, feeling the tinny, rattling wind of the old ventilation system blowing over her like an ancient man with emphysema. The air smelled of rusty metal, strange herbs and stale urine. She ignored it all, looking for signs of faint light that would indicate her quarry.

She was soon rewarded with a downward-facing grate. She peered carefully and concluded that this was indeed the shop she was going to raid. The bolts once again gave way to her trusty knife and she deposited the grate into the shaft before folding her body over to get out of the confined space and then dangling a few feet off the ground. The metal of the ventilator creaked ominously and she dropped to the floor, staying low and out of sight.

The place seemed deserted and shutters had been drawn over the store's front windows, meaning no one could see her. There were no signs of cameras or security inside the place either. She sprang into action, taking in everything she could with a discerning eye. First item she took was the opium pipe her Starr had wanted. Next she found several pieces of exotic-looking jewelry and then some old books behind glass. All these were stuffed in a sack for easy transport.

The last thing that caught her eye made her pause- sitting on a table was a sword, gleaming even in the dim light of the closed shop. Covered in gold etching and beautifully curved, it was unlike anything she had ever seen- it wasn't some cheesy knock-off samurai sword or some stupid tinfoil wushu thing. She didn't know if it was old or new. All she knew was that it had to be hers. It wanted to be hers.

She made it back to the alley a minute late but she didn't care. She forced Starr to wait until they had made their getaway before showing her the haul. Starr actually squealed and giggled in delight as Rubi opened the bag. The opium pipe, old gold and Chinese coins, jewelry, bottles of Chinese wine, books, jade trinkets, a sword…

"Oh, the sword ought to get a lot for you," Starr breathed, examining it gingerly. "How much do you think it'll be worth?"

Rubi pursed her lips for a moment and then shook her head. "I'm not selling it," she said finally. "Something tells me I'm never gonna part with it. Matter of fact, I'm probably gonna use it."

"To do what?" Starr asked, looking slightly scandalized but also a little amused and pleased at her friend's statement. "Rubi, do you… do you think you could kill a person?"

Rubi shrugged. "How hard can it be? Can't be much more difficult than kicking the shit out of them, you just have to hit or twist a little harder, right?"

"But could you do it?" Starr whispered, almost thrilled by the anticipated answer.

Rubi was silent before just nodding. She went back to examining her loot and Starr dropped the subject, knowing now was not the time. There would be other days, other moments where she would discover what could drive her dear friend to kill. She couldn't wait to find out…

* * *

><p>Rubi slammed into the wall, feeling the jolt in her spine and glaring at the person who did this to her. The large, surly shadow stumbled toward her, waving in incoherent rage.<p>

"The fuck!" he roared as he slammed his palm across her cheek, knocking her over a desk, sending papers and empty bottles flying. "The hell kinda daughter loves to shame her father like you? You know what's gonna happen if the neighbours find out about you and liking to fuck girls? Y'know what they'll say about me?"

Rubi never hit back, she didn't dare. The only time she had ever defended herself or attacked her father was one time when he went after Les and she had jumped on her old man to distract him and give her little brother time to hide. By the time the bastard was done kicking the shit out of Rubi, he'd forgotten all about Les. That was all that mattered.

But now, Les wasn't around, he had gotten out and was making a life for himself elsewhere. Her father had found Rubi in her room with a girl and went completely apeshit. The girl screamed and ran, with Rubi distracting her father long enough for her friend to get out the door free of harm. It hadn't been Starr, just some girl from school she had always wanted to try on.

She tried to rise from the mess of papers, broken bottles and the rickety desk, her side burning where he had punched her. Her eyes were spinning and she wheezed as she felt his foot slam into the same spot, knocking her sprawling. It hurt so bad, but she retreated into her mind and ignored it. The pain would pass, it always did. And before long, the stupid bastard would be a slobbering, blubbering mess, begging his daughter's forgiveness.

And she would do the cruelest thing she could think of and forgive him, talking about their mom as he wept like a little bitch.

Sometimes she felt bad for him- he was a lost and angry overgrown child. He didn't have what it took to be a parent or any sort of real person. All he could do was drink and hide from how much he hated himself. But the moments of pity passed quickly when she felt his knuckles digging into her jaw.

She hissed as she felt herself hauled to her feet by her dark hair. She felt the stinging of his wicked slaps across her red cheeks, the sting of involuntary tears on her scratched skin. She had really pissed him off this time, daring to bring home a girl in broad daylight.

"Y'think it's funny?" he raged. "Y'think it's funny for me to have a faggot bitch for a daughter? Izzat what you think, you little whore?"

The abuse finally ended after his belt had come off and he had beat her soundly. She lay in the dark corner of the shack, barely able to move, holding her side. Her breath came in shudders, her limbs twitching as her head spun. This could've been the worst beating ever. Could she really keep this up? Could her body take this?

As night fell she crawled out of their shack as quietly as she could, knowing the old man was passed out, dead drunk and hopefully wouldn't wake up for at least two days. She dragged herself behind the trailer park's power shed and lay still, waiting for the pain and sickness to subside.

She winced as she felt a presence over her, knowing that Starr had come looking for her and found her. She could hear her friend's gasp of horror, so she must've looked really bad. She couldn't see really, her eyes were swollen shut. Her mouth was also not working and her tongue felt so large she almost choked and couldn't breathe.

Through what sounded like an ocean in her ears, she could hear Starr weeping and then felt herself get gently cradled. Starr was saying things but she couldn't really make them out, just bits of phrases such as "be okay" and "try not to" and so on. She felt Starr planting gentle kisses against her broken, purple skin, the girl's tears soothing somehow.

Rubi had no idea how much time had passed before she took a deep, ragged breath and attempted to speak.

"Starr, before you say anything… no, I can't leave yet. Don't ask, I don't have any answers, just believe me. But as soon as I can, I will."

"You will?" Starr asked, choking on her words, trying to be coherent. Rubi had never seen her friend so unsettled before.

"Mirror…" she murmured to her friend. "Got a mirror with you?"

"Oh, Rubi…" Starr protested. "You shouldn't, you just… please, don't do this to yourself."

"I want to see what that motherfucker did to me," growled the injured girl. "I want to remember it all."

With trembling fingers, Starr fished into her stylish, expensive purse and handed the small compact to her friend. Without hesitation, Rubi examined her face in the mirror, betraying no emotion at what she saw. Starr looked away, crying again and biting on her knuckle.

Finally Rubi sighed and tossed the mirror on the ground between them. She gestured clumsily to a small paper bag nearby her thigh, indicating to Starr that she should retrieve the contents. Starr dutifully did so and drew out a bottle of liquor called 'Quebec', which Rubi had stolen from her father's cabinet. The girls had drunk it together on numberless occasions, often in prelude to uninhibited debauchery but also to kill the ennui that accompanied their lives before they had begun their careers as burglars.

Starr waited and watched as Rubi slumped back against the shed, unscrewed the cap wearily and pressed the bottle to her swollen, cracked and bloody lips. She took several stiff swigs, emptying nearly a third of the golden contents. With a heavy sigh she ceased her assault on the bottle and passed it to Starr. Starr took a few sips, not wanting to addle her faculties in case Rubi needed attention. To her relief, Rubi seemed to relax, even if it was only the alcohol allowing it. She lay her head down on Rubi's lap, just grateful her friend was still alive.

"Rubi, he deserves to die…" she murmured. "You know that, right?"

"Yeah, we all do," came the disinterred reply. "Who the fuck doesn't deserve to die, Starr?"

"Rubi, we may not be the best girls, but you don't deserve _this_." Starr insisted, looking up into her friend's swollen, bleary and red eyes. It was almost more than she could bear to see Rubi in this condition. She wanted to look away but she knew she had no right to. She had to get her point across. "Can't you at least try to defend yourself? With all your training now, you should be able to keep him from hurting you."

"You keep assuming that this pain is the worst thing I go through, that it's worse than what I feel inside every morning when I wake up." Rubi muttered. "Starr, maybe you look forward to another day every morning when the sun shines in through your window, but I don't have anything like that."

Starr said nothing, maybe slightly hurt that she didn't apparently count as a bright note in the darkness that was Rubi's life.

"And I am sorry if that sounds unfair to you, because you do mean a lot to me," Rubi added, seeming to sense her friend's injured feelings. "But one day you're family's gonna leave and you'll go with them. And you're gonna go to some fancy college and find some guy and live some god damn picket-fence life and everything we ever did won't mean shit."

"Rubi, that's not true!" Starr insisted, angered by her friend's assessment of her character. "I'd never bail on you!"

"It's not about bailing, Starr, it's just how things work." Rubi replied dully before taking another drink. "Like I can't leave right now, you'll have no choice but to get out of this shithole town. Some choices aren't ours, just fucking accept it."

They drank in silence, knowing there was nothing else to say.

* * *

><p>Another six months passed and indeed Starr's family did end up leaving, taking their privileged daughter with them. Rubi had spent as much time as possible with her only friend, trying not to show how upset she was at being right. Starr, of course, promised to write constantly and visit when she could, but Rubi already had her walls up, nodding and knowing she would never see her beloved again.<p>

They were hiding in a bedroom of Starr's now empty house, kissing feverishly before the car and vans pulled out, taking her away forever. Tears streamed down their cheeks and mingled on their red skin, a bitter bond that even the passage of time would never fully erase for either of them, try as they might. But finally the honking of Starr's father's sedan got to be too much and Starr dashed from the bedroom, tears flying from her face. Rubi sat in a corner, her knees against her chest and her eyes distant as she heard the convoy of vehicles pull away. It was some time before she rose and began making her way out of the house. She stopped as she noticed an elegant box in the kitchen. Approaching it, she saw her name on a small card on top, scrawled in Starr's lazy handwriting. She flipped the little card open and read.

"_My darling Rubi- you never let me give you money to help you, even though I could have done so easily. It would have been the least I could do. But you're too damn stubborn and proud. I guess that was why I loved you. But you need to take these gifts from me, please. This is not a request. We talked about your life and I want you to be ready. All my love! Starr."_

Rubi put down the note and opened the box, her eyes widening. Inside was an exquisite pair of six shooters, the steel gleaming in the dim light of the room. Sturdily built but elegant, the revolvers almost seemed to call to her. The length of each of the barrels was etched with Chinese characters. Beside them were the chambers and a small pile of hundred dollar bills, held together with an elastic band. She was about to get annoyed until she noticed that the elastic band had the word 'Ammo' written on it.

She picked up one of the pistols and examined them closely. She had shot handguns before but these were unlike anything she had ever worked with. These were serious pieces of hardware, cunningly crafted and designed to take punishment and deal death. Whatever Starr had spent on these, she clearly meant business and wanted Rubi to take it seriously.

Most assuredly she would.

* * *

><p>She was far away from the park, in a deserted factory complex. No one ever came here, at least not during the day. If anyone heard her, they wouldn't give a shit. The sound of weapons discharging was hardly unusual in her squalid little corner of town.<p>

She felt the weight of the pistols in her hands, biting her lip as she shifted them around, trying to find the perfect grip. She had shown them to old Artur Evreilor, who had whistled and expressed some level of surprise at her treasures. He explained that they were indeed high quality weapons that anyone would be happy to take into a gunfight. She slipped some money his way and the ex-Israeli commando showed her how to hold the revolvers and fire them, both individually and in tandem.

She stood now, gazing down the makeshift range she had built for herself, her targets nothing more than a series of cans, scraps of metal on which she had painted targets and also some life-size cardboard mock-ups of people. At least one of them had a photo of her father's face tacked over the head, not that she cared what anyone else thought. Fuck 'em.

She squeezed the grips of her pistols, trying to focus, not at all certain why she felt so nervous. How the hell hard could it be?

She raised on pistol and took careful aim at a can. She remembered what the old Jew had told her about keeping her breathing steady and squeezing the trigger, not jerking on it suddenly. She kept her eye on the target…

There was a very loud report as the pistol kicked in her hand. A can did indeed spin and tumble through the air, buckled by her bullet, but it sure as hell hadn't been the one she was aiming at. She frowned and shot again. The shot went wide, punching out the glass of a window in the old factory building behind her little shooting range. She snarled in frustration and squeezed off the remaining four shots in quick succession, aiming at nothing in particular, reveling only in the horrific amount of noise these weapons made.

Day after day she snuck back to her secret training ground and practiced. Angered by her lack of progress and seeming lack of talent, she brought bottles of her dad's Quebec with her, hoping to dull the fury she felt at her failure.

She missed six shots in a row and screamed in frustration. Without thinking, she dashed down the range, determined to murder the targets up close and personal. She pointed her pistols and fired as she ran, oblivious to her surroundings. She watched the bullets race away from her guns and find the doomed targets, smashing into them with uncanny accuracy.

She screeched to a stop and stared down at her pistols in bewilderment, her chest still heaving in anger. She reloaded the chambers and took a deep breath…

She turned and sprinted away from the targets, almost back to the start line before she leapt into the air and twisted. She fired several shots as she sailed backwards, not thinking about her targets, just letting what came naturally happen. She was pretty damned sure she squeezed off all twelve shots before she crashed into the hard, dusty ground, tumbling and winding herself. When she finally came to a stop, she rose slowly, spitting dust out of her mouth. She sheathed her weapons and walked back down the range to examine her handiwork.

To her astonishment, every single shot seemed to have found its target.

"Are you fucking kidding me?" she exclaimed aloud to no one in particular. Did she suck at shooting if she was not moving but if she moved and dodged and leapt and rolled she could hit anything? Fucking really? What sort of shit was that?

She took a risk and brought Artur with her one day to show him. He watched silently and simply nodded once she had demonstrated her rather unique skill.

"I have a question for you, Rubishka," he said in a quiet voice, using his pet name for her. "As you know, I am an old man and I too have a unique set of skills, not unlike yours. But these bones are timeworn and the eyes that watch them are many."

Rubi listened, wondering what he was getting at.

"This old man would ask you a favour, because he thinks you have what it takes to accomplish this task. Every bit as important, Artur believes you understand the value of discretion, yes?"

Rubi said nothing.

"You have told me what you and your little girlfriend used to do to pass time. The stealing, I mean," he added, wanting to make sure she understood his interest. "You were never caught and no one even came close to doing so. I would have you retrieve something for me, something hard to get. Your skill at stealth and your acrobatics and flexibility, they are exactly what is needed. And you are good with your pistols, so if it got ugly, well… could you defend yourself?"

She simply nodded.

"But this is not a favour for which I will not pay you, of course," he went on to say. "Indeed, my friends and I would make sure you were properly compensated for your risk."

"I'm listening." Rubi said evenly.

* * *

><p>Rubi didn't really give a shit about politics or beliefs or anything. Politics and all these morals were for assholes who wanted to tell everyone else how to live. Old Artur had spoken her language when he offered her money to do what was supposed to be done. He seemed like a decent guy, but business was business.<p>

The buildings she now crept towards were flat and grey, a series of concrete shells. Apparently they were once slated to be part of a school the state had wanted to build, but the funding fell through and they had sat empty for many years until they were bought or leased by a group of Neo-Nazis who used the place as their so-called 'army' headquarters. Red banners bearing swastikas were visible and she ignored them, concentrating on what she had been hired to do.

She peered out at the perimeter gate and fence that surrounded the complex- a standard wire fence, fixed with concertina wire up top. Two skinheads covered in tattoos guarded the gate, casually holding AR-15's and trying to look intimidating. Fucking idiots. She recognized one of them as a bully who had attended her school before he had been kicked out for violence. So these retards had taken him in…

She spied a chestnut tree from which sprang a sturdy branch that hung over the gate with impunity. Many trees had been allowed to grow near the perimeter and she knew that she had her in. All she had to do was distract the assholes at the gate, because no one was in the watchtowers at the four corners.

These guys weren't on guard against an attack; it was just for show in case anyone came and protested their presence. They wanted to look tough. Wearing all their fake Nazi shit, they just looked like they couldn't think for themselves.

She scrambled up nimbly into the tree that had the overhanging branch and took a moment to assess the compound. She saw a door propped open on one of the main building's sides, not far away from her position. She almost wanted to know if she could sneak by the morons at the gate without distracting them but old Artur was paying her to be efficient, not daring. In and out, as few hassles as possible, right?

Rubi took a deep breath and composed herself. She had stolen lots of stuff in the past, but this was different. Someone else was asking her to get something done. She had broken into homes and shops before, even some schools and factories. Was this much different? She had avoided security guards before. These were kids playing at being soldiers. She could handle them.

She gently caressed her hands along the supple leather holsters of her six-shooters, comforted by them. She felt the reassuring weight of her new sword slung across her back. She had tried swinging it around and even cut some things with it. The edge was incredibly sharp. Bullets and a sword were all she needed to defend herself if it came down to it.

She thought back to her lessons with Artur about how to shoot these pistols. He had even shown her his old sidearm from when he was in the Israeli army, a semi-automatic 9mm Browning pistol. She noticed that his pistol carried thirteen rounds in a magazine whereas her pistols were six-shooters. He had asked him why these weapons she had been given has so few bullets.

"_Because, Rubishka," _ he had said in that sage old voice. _"If six bullets cannot solve your problem, it probably cannot be solved…"_

"Here we go…" she breathed.

She pulled the cherry bomb out of her pocket and lit the fuse. Setting it into a child's Y-frame slingshot, she pelted it across the compound and over the heads of the guards. It landed in the scrub not far away from them and detonated with a loud _bang!_ Both boys jumped in initial shock and then scampered over to see what had made the noise, forgetting their oh-so-important posts.

Rubi landed lightly on her feet out of the tree and sprinted to the door, slipping inside before she was noticed. To her relief the hallway was empty. She crept down the corridor, its flickering lights making static sounds overhead. The air stank of stale cigarette smoke and piss. Didn't Nazis know how to use the fucking bathroom?

Not far ahead she saw a door open and old music in German floated out into the hallway. She snuck forward and peered inside- sitting in a chair facing away from her, a middle-aged balding man in some grey paramilitary uniform was at a desk, muttering to himself as worked on a typewriter. Posters all over the room displayed the swastika and images of Hitler, that German leader who caused whichever World War it was he had caused.

She could have snuck by him easily but she paused for a moment when she noticed a discarded sheet of paper in the waste bin near the door. It was typed in German and she couldn't read what it said, but it was definitely a list of people in their town who had Jewish names, Artur Evreilor among them.

As quietly as she could, she reached down into the waste paper basket and retrieved the page before retreating from the room. She proceeded down the hallway past more rooms, several of which had been converted into bed chambers with cots or bunks in them. They seemed to be in a state of disuse.

Maybe there just wasn't that big a call for Nazi assholes these days and membership was down.

Old Artur did not have a lot of information for her about what to expect once inside the compound or where her target was, but he told her it would doubtless be locked away securely. It had been stolen form him and the police just weren't trying that hard to find it. He therefore had looked for outside help and found Rubi to be perfect for the job. Young, spry and loyal to money, he could count on her to do what needed to be done.

Stairs leading down to a basement were on the right and she took them on a hunch. Before long she reached the boiler room and supply cellars. It was hot and dark, the whiny hum of the boiler punctuated only by the chittering of the rats that called the place home.

She found a storage cage in one of the back rooms and peered through the wiring to see what lay within- most of it looked like junk to her, but what she thought was junk might be real important to someone else. She didn't care, as long as she got money for it. Old books, uniforms, banners, firearms and weapons were scattered everywhere hap-hazardly and none of them seemed like they were related to Nazis.

There it was, lying against the far side of the cage, a white flag with two vertical blue lines and a Star of David in the middle. It was old and dirty and tattered, not to mention had a few brown blood stains on it, but that had to be what Artur was looking for. Nothing else matched the description.

She scowled as she realized the cage was secured shut with a padlock. She didn't have a key and didn't know where to find one in this place. How the fuck was she going to get in there? She couldn't exactly waste time here.

If she shot the lock it would certainly be heard and it also might not do the job. Artur had told her about how deadly the ricochet of a bullet could be in an enclosed environment so she wouldn't take any chances there. She cast around on the floor for a brick to smash it with or an iron bar to try and pry it open, but nothing.

Taking a deep breath, she drew her sword from the scabbard on her back and fitted the long blade between the bars of the cage door. The gold and red of the guard and handle glinted dully in the dim light. She gripped the weapon firmly with both hands and then began to pull. She could hear metal groaning and she gritted her teeth as she flexed her shoulders and hips, planting her feet wide to give herself more traction.

Her brow beaded with sweat as she watched the blade begin to bend, along with the metal of the cage door. Her fingers ached as she pulled with all the strength she had, praying that she would not lose her grip.

There was a screeching, metallic snap and the door gave way, flying open while Rubi tumbled backwards, unprepared for the sudden lack of resistance. She came to a stop some feet away as her head hit the boiler with a _clang! _Rubi swore angrily but was too stunned to move for a moment, her ears ringing. She felt sick.

Slowly she moved and tried to rest on her elbows. There was a sharp and stinging pain in her left forearm and she realised she must have cut herself with her blade as she fell. She glared at the laceration, which was not deep but hurt like fuck all the same. She had no future in this business if she kept doing stupid shit like that.

She slowly rose to her knees and closed her eyes, taking several deep breaths and trying to ignore the burning pain in her arm. Her concentration was interrupted, however, by someone's leg pressing up against her and a firm hand on the back of her neck. She froze.

"Well, what have we here?" asked a sinister voice she immediately hated. Whoever it was reeked of cigarettes and alcohol, cheap stuff at that. She slowly turned her head to look up at the person and her eyes narrowed. It was the asshole from the office room that had the list of Jews. He smiled down at her but it wasn't kindly.

"A little girl lost alone in the big bad world, hm?" he mused as he squatted down next to her, his hand still gripping her neck firmly. "What are you doing here, _fraulein_?" he asked in an atrocious German accent.

"Fuck you." Rubi hissed, still trying to discern his intent.

The man stopped smiling and gripped her neck tighter, causing her to wince in pain as his thumb and finger dug in. "Listen to me, bitch," he snarled. "This can be easy or it can be hard. If you want it to be easy, then you tell me what the hell you're doing down here and how you got in. If you don't tell me, I'll make sure I find out anyway and that you suffer for it."

The man noticed a piece of folded paper on the floor nearby and picked it up, not releasing his grip on Rubi's neck. He unfolded it and examined the contents, his eyes hardening. He looked back at her, all trace of amusement gone from his voice.

"So _they_ sent you, is that it?" he sneered. "Those filthy sub-humans thought they could find out our plans? Even if you had gotten away, this scrap would do them no good. We'll find them all and they _will_ die. The work never stopped, you know that?"

His mouth was next to her ear now as he taunted her. "You a Jew lover, kid? Do you do favours for those pigs when you're not stealing for them? Maybe you can do a favour for a real man instead and then I'll let you live…"

She tried to resist as he gripped her hand and placed it on his crotch, massaging her palm against the grey pants. She growled and struggled and he laughed as he finally let her wrench her hand away. He shook her neck and then gripped her again tightly.

"So what do you say, Jew-lover? Want to do a favour for the other team? Might be the first thing you've done right in your whole miserable-"

The man stopped talking when he heard a 'click' sound and then felt the cold steel of a pistol beneath his chin. Rubi turned her head and glared up at him while he went pale, too stunned and terrified to move.

Fury boiled through Rubi at the pig's violation of her but she couldn't pull the trigger. She was too angry. Her mind whirled as she thought of everything he had done and everything he represented. He fucking deserved to die, but she couldn't do it.

And then an icy calm descended over her and she remembered her job. If she wanted to get out of here and get paid, this fucker had to die now. She couldn't kill him in anger, but she would blow his god damn head off if it meant getting her money.

And in that moment, Rubi made a decision and never dared look back.

She didn't jerk the trigger, she squeezed it. Right next to her ear, the report of the pistol going off sounded like a thunderclap. In the dim light, the bright flash blinded her. The man she had just shot vaulted backward, the top of his head coming apart in a shower of blood, bone and brain. Dashed to the floor, Rubi shuddered and wrestled for control, ignoring what she had just done and concentrating on getting her wits about her so she could get the fuck out.

Her ears were still ringing as she staggered to her feet and made her way unsteadily to the cage. She grabbed the flag and then headed out of the boiler room. Upstairs she could hear shouting and people rushing around. She was almost at the top of the stairs when the door opened and a man spied her. He seemed somewhat shocked at first but then started to yell.

Rubi made and instant decision and thrust her sword deep into his chest. He shuddered and then froze, whatever he was about to shout dying in his throat. Blood trickled from his lips as he pitched forward into the stairwell. Rubi barely had time to pull her sword back and then scamper back down the stairs as he tumbled after her. She wasn't getting out that way anymore.

Her mind racing, she saw no other exits out of the basement. She clenched her teeth in rage until she spotted a grate in the ventilation shaft on the ceiling. It had to lead somewhere. She nimbly scrambled over the machinery, willing herself not to cry in pain as she touched the hot metal of the boiler and once she was on top of a steady surface she used her sword to pry the grate off the shaft. She leapt and grabbed on to the aluminum, hearing it groan and willing it to hold. She quickly lifted herself into the grate, picked a direction and began crawling.

The air was searing sometimes and the old ventilation system sounded like the rattling breath of some metal giant with a chest cold. She slid along with her knees, trying not to thump then down on the shaft floor, hopefully keeping herself from making too much noise. If these fuckers heard something overhead, they'd doubtless shoot first and ask questions later.

She came to a sudden stop as the shaft now went straight up. She craned her neck but it was too dark to see. She spread her legs to either side of the shaft to distribute her weight and then stood slowly. She closed her eyes and listened for a moment- over the sound of the ventilation she could not hear anyone close by. She had to take a risk in getting out of here eventually.

Rubi took a penny out of her pocket and threw it a few feet overhead against the wall in front of her. It rebounded with a horrifically loud _'pang!_'sound and then landed at her feet. Cursing as loudly as she dared, she took another penny and threw it up and against the other wall. She was rewarded with the sound of the penny clattering its way down a horizontal shaft. It was maybe six feet above her. She took another deep breath, slowly brought her feet together and bent her knees, praying the metal would hold.

The metal beneath her did buckle only slightly as she jumped and she grabbed frantically at the ledge she hoped would be there in this dark wind tunnel. Her fingers found purchase and she clamped down as hard as she could, hanging precariously. Her heart pounded furiously as she raised herself inch by agonizing inch, her arm muscles screaming in protest at lifting her whole weight in such an enclosed space. She leaned her upper body forward, trying to balance herself into the parallel shaft, wincing as she rested her weight on her fingers.

Certain she now had enough mass in the shaft to not fall, she wrestled her fingers out from beneath her abdomen and continued her crawl forward. Feet thundered below, telling her that the shaft she was in was above the main floor. She came across a grate and carefully looked down- it was the office the Nazi asshole had been working in. the desk was aligned against the back wall, which was on her left, so the right side was out to the hall and she was heading back the way she had come in.

Encouraged, Rubi began to snake forward resolutely, heartened that the shaft was over the individual rooms and not the corridor, where most of the people looking for her were likely to be. She soon reached a corner and turned left, determined to find an exit from this hellish shaft. She ignored the icy burn of the cut on her arm, the deafening ringing in her ears from the pistol going off and the general numbing ache of her body.

She spied light not far ahead, a shuttered grate awaiting her. She moved as fast as she dared, knowing that this was no time to get sloppy. Before long she reached the grate and was rewarded with a view of the open compound. Concealed from view by the slate of the grate, she peered out and saw morons in Nazi uniforms running around in confusion, most of them holding pistols or semi-automatic rifles.

She watched as two of them conferred below her, the higher-ranking one clearly agitated.

"They found Kemp in the boiler room with his fucking head blown off!" he exclaimed. "The vault door was pried open and spoils are missing!"

"Who did it?" asked the lower-ranking moron.

"Fucking Jews, who else?" raged the other one. "They're gonna get theirs now, I'm tellin' you! Once we've secured the perimeter and hidden Kemp's body for when the cops get here, we're gonna go get more men, drive into town and find a few kikes to kill. Get the truck ready, this is a full-scale operation!"

Rubi sneered in disgust as the higher-up turned away and lope off. The junior man attempted to give his officer a Nazi salute but the other man had ignored him and left. Somewhat disgruntled at his dismissal, the moron sprinted across the open concrete to an old military truck, something Rubi had once heard was called a 'quad'. It had a large back covered in tarp or canvas and could doubtless hold at least a dozen men.

She looked across the square and saw the front gates, which were currently manned by two morons with rifles, looking very alert. If she meant to make a dash for the gates and escape, she would have to take them down, possibly others and it might get real ugly. Her mind raced as she tried to think of a plan. Then the moron with the truck did something that astonished Rubi- he turned on the vehicle and backed it up, right beneath her. The hatch to the back faced left but the ground below her was obscured from view, with maybe two feet of clearance.

Rubi wriggled until she had her sword off her back and began bashing the pommel into the screws holding the grate in place. The loud roar of the truck engine drowned out any noise she made with her efforts. After several concerted hits, the grate popped off and landed on the roof of the truck, still undetected. She slipped out and dropped down behind the side of the quad. People ran by but failed to notice her. She ducked and looked under the chassis and concluded that if she were cautious there would be enough room for her to stow away and not be noticed.

She carefully crawled under the vehicle and wedged herself between several parts that didn't look like they would move. Facing upward to protect her face, she rested as best she could, listening for danger and praying none of these fuckheads would think to look under their truck. She took several deep breaths, ignored the all the pains and aches and held tight…

* * *

><p>Rubi sprinted through the woods, breathing heavily, every movement a symphony of agony. She held her side as she ran, desperately hoping none of her ribs were broken. Covered in scrapes and cuts from when she had released herself under the speeding truck, she had tumbled off the road and into the scrub alongside. No one in the truck noticed her as they sped off toward the town. She lay in the ditch for several seconds, shuddering and gasping for air, trying to shake off the fear. When she had collected herself, she made sure she still had all her gear and that the flag was intact, got up and began her run through the woods.<p>

She knew where to meet Artur, a building belonging to some kind of Jewish or Israeli Fellowship Club. He had said that she would find him there and she would be safe if anything went wrong. She would have to trust him on that. And she had to warn them what these Nazi motherfuckers had planned.

Bursting out of the trees, she raced through the backyards of the houses and trailers that formed the border of their town. She ignored the angry curses of anyone she interrupted enjoying the evening sun. Her heart thundered, like it would burst out of her chest. Everything ached and she felt sick to her stomach. She forced images of the men she'd killed from her mind, determined to not let this cloud her judgement.

There it was. The club or temple or whatever it was. There was a great big bronze Star of David on the front. She almost made straight for it until she remembered that Artur had told her to come around the back. Out of breath, she made her way around to the rear of the large white building and spied a door up a series of concrete steps. A rabbi opened the door and nodded to her as she stumbled through and into the building. She finally found a large meeting room, decorated with menorahs and other symbols she casually associated with the Jewish faith.

Sitting around a long table were several elderly men, one of whom was Artur Evreilor. They all rose as she entered and Artur approached her, taking her gently by her shaking shoulders.

"Rubishka…" he said quietly, seemingly relieved she was alive. "Are you-"

Rubi nodded and pulled the flag out from beneath her jacket and presenting it to him. The old man gazed on it with glassy eyes for several moments. He then turned and showed it to his fellows, all of whom whispered and said several prayers of thanks.

"_Hashem yezul…"_ he said to them reverently. He turned back to Rubi now and smiled. "My girl, this flag was one of the most treasured symbols of the Six Day War in 1967 and also the Yom Kippur War in 1973. It flew over many battlefields and the men of my own unit fought underneath it, never letting it fall into enemy hands. It was safe in this very hall for years until those… those Nazi _mamzers_…"

He stopped talking for a moment and then looked at Rubi in concern. "You are hurt, _libling_. We must see to-"

"There's no time for that," Rubi interrupted. "I found this list in that compound and I shot their fucking leader in the head."

She took out the paper and showed it to Artur and his expression became grim upon reading it. "I heard them talking after they'd found his body and I think they're gonna retaliate. They were picking up reinforcements."

Everyone stopped talking as they heard her words and looked from her to Artur. He took a deep breath and turned back to Rubi.

"_Leml_, you have done everything you can for us tonight," he said gently. "Now you must leave this place, get home quickly and wait until you see me again at the gym next week."

"But I don't-"

"You must now trust me, _lialka_, as I trusted in you," the old man chided. "Leave your weapons in my care; you must not get caught with them. Come…"

He led her past the other old men, all of whom nodded to her respectfully. He stood in front of what seemed to be an altar and lifted the top. Pulling out a strongbox, he quickly handed her ten neatly wrapped stacks of twenty dollar bills.

"Five thousand dollars, my child, as we agreed. You have done us a great service and it will never be forgotten. You must go now."

Rubi scowled defiantly, not budging and certainly not surrendering her weapons.

Patiently, Artur smiled. "This is no longer your fight, Rubishka. Your part in this particular tale is done. We will see each other again and maybe work together some time. But leave us now, you do not belong here."

She was shaken out of her defiance by how firmly he said the last part and finally nodded, handing over her sword, six-shooters and ammo. Without another word, she turned and strode out the back door, making her way back to the shack she called home.

That night, as she lay in the corner of her barren little room, from across town she could hear sirens wailing and the echoing report of weapons firing. The entire town seemed in an uproar but she dutifully stayed in her room, ignoring the noise and the hideous images that played across her mind…

* * *

><p>She awoke to the sound of little cymbals clashing. She opened her eyes and her little monkey toy was chattering away excitedly, bashing its tiny brass plates together and rocking unsteadily. She groaned and knocked it over, silencing it. Damn thing had never worked properly anyway.<p>

She drew in a sharp breath as she rose, her arm stinging nastily. The laceration was covered in several small bandages but didn't seem to have opened itself during the night. Everything still hurt, but it was now at a manageable level, something she was used to following her dad's drunken rages. It was Sunday and there was no school, so no need to get moving.

She exited her room and saw the front door was wide open. She looked out and saw her father standing in the driveway, talking to two cops. One of them noticed her and her father turned his head and scowled. He beckoned her over and she approached the small group suspiciously.

"What?" she asked.

"They're askin' questions about the boys who live out at that compound and their gunfight with the Heebs last night," her father growled, his tone indicating which groups he favoured more. "They're askin' if anyone saw anything."

"No, we were here," Rubi replied, scowling. "That gunfight was all the way on the other side of town, wasn't it? What the hell were we supposed to see?"

"What about earlier in the day?" one of the cops asked, a rather brutish-looking fellow whose eyes were spaced close together. "Guys in the compound say someone busted in, murdered their leader, stole some stuff and killed at least one other member. Know anything about it?"

"No, why would I?" Rubi challenged. "Are they claiming a sixteen year-old girl broke in, handed their asses to them and then got out? If that was true, why did they attack the Jewish Center?"

"Where were you yesterday during the day?" the second cop asked, undeterred by her logic.

Rubi didn't answer initially.

"Girl, fucking answer the law man!" her father snarled.

She turned and looked at him, her expression icy. "I was with a girl, you happy?"

Her father glared back at her with barely contained rage while the two cops just looked surprised.

"That's right, old man," she sneered. "While you were out getting shit-faced, I was fucking a girl. Now do you wish I was out shooting Nazis?"

The two cops just spun on their heels and walked away, their investigation obviously finished. Her father turned toward her, his fists trembling they were clenched so tight and his face almost purple with fury.

"Get in that house…" he said quietly. Rubi turned slowly and marched into the house, knowing what was to come. It was alright, though, she had won yet again. All he could do was hit her, but he would never beat her.

She spent the rest of the day lying in her room, face on the floor, trying to move. He had been especially brutal today, even slamming his foot into her already damaged ribs. He has slapped and gripped the cut on her forearm several times before punching her so hard across the jaw she was sure it would break.

But then it ended suddenly and he staggered out the door, to drown his self-loathing. It was dark before she managed to make her way to the corner where her flimsy sheet served as a bed and held her cymbal monkey close, rubbing her thumbs over the nappy, worn brown material that was supposed to be its fur reflexively. It was her solace as she tried to ignore the agony, tried to block out the hateful images. She remembered long ago how it had been a present from her dad, a different man back then- still angry a lot and temperamental, but not the violent drunken piece of shit he was now. She clung to the monkey in memory of the father she had once had. He may have been gone forever, but he would never be forgotten…

* * *

><p>True to his word, Artur was at the gym that following Monday and Rubi went in after school to see him. The old man smiled as he saw her but also looked concerned, since she was covered in bruises and welts that she didn't even try to conceal. No matter how it infuriated her father, she wore them openly, like a defiant badge of honour.<p>

"I see I am not the only one who had a difficult weekend," he murmured as he examined her face. "But you are a tough _shiksa_, eh?"

"So what happened?" she asked, cutting to the chase.

The former commando shrugged. "They got drunk and came after us at the center. Several of us, we're not as old or as helpless as we look, you know? Many of us served together in Israel and those skills, they are always there, if needed, God forbid…"

"So that gunfight everyone heard took place outside your center?"

"And perhaps a little inside," Artur admitted. "They came knocking so we let them in, for the Old Book says it is rude to refuse a guest, even at that late hour. Once they were inside the halls, they proved… manageable."

"Did you leave me any?" she asked. "I still feel like I have a score to settle."

"_Libling_, if you mean to go into this world you are considering, you must first know that anger will get you killed, and quickly." Artur said solemnly. "Anger has no place in it. It causes mistakes and clouds judgement. No, your part in this was simple. You were paid to get something back for me and you did. I paid you. It is done. You have no reckoning with those _schleps_ from the compound, may the Almighty rest their misguided souls…"

"All dead?" Rubi breathed.

"Is it not better this way?" he said simply. "Our reckoning with those men and everyone like them has been a long time in coming, Rubishka. The death of these men is simply a chapter in the eternal struggle. Your struggles are your own. If you walk down this road, countless men will die."

"And they'll deserve it." Rubi said firmly.

"Ah, judge, jury and executioner." Artur mused. "To be young again and to know everything and who deserves to live or die. Such simpler times."

"Only a fucktard would say my life's simple," growled the girl. "So there's none left and you guys won. You still got my gear?"

Artur smiled and nodded, walking over to a large dufflebag and took hold of it. He presented it to her and waited patiently while Rubi rummaged through the contents, making sure everything was still accounted for. She finally nodded and looked up at him.

"Good working with you, old man. You still giving ass-kicking lessons here?"

"Whenever it pleases you, I am at your disposal." Artur said humbly, nodding as she walked out of the gym.

* * *

><p>Time passed and things changed. Starr stopped writing, which Rubi had always expected. No doubt she had found a guy and was getting ready to be a perfect wife. Rubi decided not to cry.<p>

Les still communicated with her when he could, having gotten into law school out east and apparently doing well for himself. Rubi's father lost a lot of money gambling and was murdered right in front of her early the next year when he couldn't pay off the debt. Left with no one, Rubi trained as hard as she could with her gymnastics, her sword and her guns, honing her skills for the life she had chosen. She didn't blink when she left the town behind and moved south, looking for the isolation that she so craved. Little or nothing of value went with her from the home, just her toy monkey and a few cases of the 'Quebec' liquor her father had loved so much and now was her anesthetic of choice.

Rubi did jobs all around the sprawling state she called home but never nearby her abode, a rule that Artur had taught her. _Never shit where you sleep._ The money kept coming in and she made sure that every job could not be traced back to her with tangible evidence, another valuable lesson from the old man. She eventually bought a junk yard in the Texas desert, far away from human habitation, which was exactly what she wanted. Dubbing her trash heap the 'Bone Yard', it served as her base of operations and training facility. Everything she needed or wanted was here.

She looked now at the sky though the hatch of the huge plane carcass she now lived in, clouds passing by swiftly and disappearing. She felt the warm breeze rustle the blankets of the bed she slept on, that particular piece of furniture being one of the few luxury items she allowed herself. She'd never had one as a kid or teen, she was fucking well going to have one now- a simple bed that rested weary bones.

And was big enough for two.

She sighed as she heard a car approaching down the dirt road leading into the Bone Yard. Clients? At this fucking hour?

"Get scarce." Rubi said tersely to the shape that lay next to her. There was a delicate moan and the person stirred. Rubi sat up and nudged the person again, sighing as she did so.

"C'mon, time to go home. Get dressed and hide while I talk to my guests."

As her bedmate rolled off the bed and took the sheets along, she pulled on her own clothes and strapped on her pistols and sword. Still groggy, she took a swig of liquor to clear her mind. She walked out and looked down from the second level of the plane, where the bed was. A lone car was pulling up, but it was an elegant one, black and chrome that gleamed in the brutal Texas sun.

She watched as several men in black suits exited the car and waited patiently. Though they were obviously carrying concealed pistols (she could tell by the way they stood), what intrigued her was that at least two of them were advanced in years but still seemed strong and spry. A window rolled down and a man not much older than her looked out and up at her.

"For this you traded civilization?" he asked. "But I am not here to judge, Miss Malone, I am here to speak to you about an important matter."

"Of course it is, why the hell would you drive out here otherwise?" Rubi stated, pointing out the obvious. She took another pull on her bottle, wishing this jerk would get to the point.

"My name is Eidel, Miss Malone, Eidel Evreilor. You knew my father, yes?"

"I remember him," she said simply. "How is the old fart?"

"He is doing better than any of us, bless his soul," the son said, making a gesture that his companions copied dutifully. "I have come to ask you to fulfil a debt of honour."

"Pass." Rubi said bluntly.

"What?" the junior Evreilor asked, seemingly confused. "Are you refusing to honour a debt?"

"Get something straight, pal," she said, kneeling on one knee and looking down at him. "I worked with your dad once. Once. I got him what he wanted and he paid me. End of story. He even told me that we were even, no strings. So yeah, unless you've got cash, you can stuff your debt of honour up your ass."

The man seemed at a loss of words for several moments. He was then distracted as someone wrapped in a white sheet skirted by through a door of the plane, but only saw a pale and shapely ankle and calf before they disappeared.

"Eyes up here." Rubi called down, annoyed at this waste of time. "If you have money, we can do business. If not, you're just trespassing. What's it gonna be?"

"They say you're the best," the man began, clearly trying to make a point. "My father respected you greatly."

"Good for him, and now he's dead." Rubi sneered. "You got a point?"

"I… well, he…"

"Goodbye." Rubi said simply, turning and walking off, taking another drink.

"Would two hundred thousand dollars change your mind about a debt of honour?" he called out.

Rubi paused and turned to stare down at him.

"I'm listening…"

_End Chapter II_

* * *

><p><strong>Author's Notes: <strong>Let's face it, folks; Rubi remains one of the most unlikeable people in video game history, surpassed only by that dickbag Kratos and those inbred hillbilly morons Kane and Lynch. Even Knuckles the Echidna was more personable than her. But the obvious being said, she is still interesting to write, especially since we have no real indications of her origins.

It seemed like a no-brainer, since she is basically the poor man's Lara Croft. As ornery as she is, she had to have daddy issues and maybe a (very) deeply buried noble streak, at least where her brother was concerned. Her somewhat strained encounter with Madame Dvorak in the original game smacked of Sapphic tendencies and I decided that Rubi liked girls. She likes killing men too much to do anything else with them.

If you look closely enough during the Swig clips in-game, she is indeed drinking form a bottle labelled 'Quebec', which amuses me since I am Canadian. French-Canadian at that, at least partially. True, shooting the bottle is rather harsh and she doesn't recycle, but since she is American this doesn't surprise me in the least.

Accounting for her rather absurd skill in gymnastics and making it plausible is kinda fun. As for the whole slo-mo thing while fighting, I was half-tempted to give her a benign tumour that was putting pressure on the basal ganglia deep inside her right lobe and causing her to experience a shift in the passage of time. But Rubi is screwed up enough without a tumour, so I will just leave it to the unknowable. The rabbis she was hangin' with would approve.

Why Nazis and Jews? Well, killing Nazis will always be politically correct (it will be politically incorrect to kill zombies before it will be to kill Nazis) and her unarmed fighting style reeks of Krav-Maga, so I needed an Israeli to teach to to her. It kinda took off from there. Simple, eh?

An interesting origin for her weapons made sense and as for the cymbal monkey, well, that origin HAD to happen. Tell me I'm wrong…

**Calling all betas! Calling all betas! **I am looking for someone who has a good working knowledge of both Star Trek: Deep Space 9 and Warhammer 40k to act as beta for a crossover fic I am writing. If you feel you are the one who is up to the challenge, but all means message me and we shall discuss it. If you are a 40k fa, there are some other fics I am working on we can discuss as well.

Working on Chapter 3, but I need to publish a chapter or two for The Young Conqueror first before Rubi's War moves forward. Don't worry, it won't be long, I promise. Hope you enjoy!

_L'chaim!_

Management


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